<p>Funny that thread has gone on so long but OP seems to be missing. Couple of points. Two types schools ban drugs, drinking, fraternization etc. One is religious schools that mandate religious education (as opposed to say Notre Dame which is Jessuit but does not mandate religious behavior). The second are the service academies (West point etc., trying taking drugs there).</p>
<p>Second point, among schools that are not in the above categories, they are varying degrees of partying and drug use. Caltech has some of the lowest drug use or alcoholism due to the type of students who go there and the size. Some schools are more party oriented, others less. So OP to needs to figure out if she wants her daughter to go the first set of schools or choose one in the second set and make sure that it is of the less partying kind. Also, even within the party schools, a lot depends on the student. Students also need to exercise caution and mix with the appropriate crowd. For example, students in a honors college tend to be less involved in these activities and especially if there are honors dorms. So, you can protect your child to a certain extent, beyond it is up to the child.</p>
<p>THANKS to all those who replied with great suggestions.
Also apologize to all those who felt my original post didn’t have specifics.
Apologize again for not having come back to the thread for a while (had an emergency in the family… )</p>
<p>Agree with parents who feel that it should be within the kid. As a parent we try to do our best, but can not garauntee that all we tell and practice actually gets into the kid’s head! May be as an over-protective parent, want to prevent exposure to achohol/drugs etc if possible! </p>
<p>Don’t you trust your daughter enough to send her out in the world and make wise choices rather than try to place her in an unreal environment? What are you going to do when she graduates from this “no drinking/drugs/sex” school and goes out into the real world where those things DO exist?</p>
<p>Welcome back and I hope all is well now on the homefront. You asked a fairly simple, though incomplete, question and look what it devolved into. Sorry.</p>
<p>Maybe the thing to do is have you and your daughter decide on some colleges based on academic and other important criteria. Then within those schools find the ones that have substance-free dorms. Many do. Generally students have to sign a pledge if they enter into such a community, and it is very strict. I think she would find her kindred spirits in such an environment.</p>
<p>You’re not going to find a secular university that is without drinking/sex/drugs campus-wide unless you turn to strict religion-affiliated schools. BYU is one such.</p>
<p>hypermom – Unless you plan on sending you daughter to a religiously affiliated school you’re going to find it pretty hard if not impossible to keep her away from drinking/sex/and/or drugs. There are a few schools that have “dry” campuses, but often the students just go to the surrounding area and still drink as much if not more. There are schools that have substance free dorms, but often those are not available to first-year students. </p>
<p>Instead of looking for a school where she’ll be isolated from these things, look for schools that don’t have a large culture around these behaviors and try to steer her towards those. Students at almost any college will drink, and some of them may use drugs, but at some schools drinking or drug use is a larger part of the predominant culture than at others. </p>
<p>But the best defense against these things is to trust that after 18 years of being your child, your student is ready to protect herself against these things. Trust that they understand that risky behaviors can lead to unintended consequences, and that they have a strong enough sense of self know what to embrace and what to avoid. Unless you want to send your child to BYU or Bob Jones University, the best thing you can do is place your trust in your kid, not in the rules of the college.</p>
<p>According to mini, a former CC poster knowledgeable about campus alcohol and drug use, with a few exceptions schools that have higher alcohol use also have higher drug use. So if your daughter picks a school with a lower alcohol rate and it’s not named Reed, it will probably have less drug use as well.</p>
<p>How do all girls college like Barnard meet my criteria?</p>
<p>Some have questioned what happens after graduation, won’t she be facing them?
Yes, she would. I am hoping by then maturity kicks in!
Yes, we would like to trust our kids after being under our watchful eyes for 18 years. However, I am afraid that they might cave in with peer pressure knowingly or unknowingly.</p>
<p>hypermom, I second the posters above who have suggested women’s colleges. As secular colleges go, they tend to have the tamest campuses. Students at these colleges who choose to binge drink, use drugs, etc., will often do so at neighboring co-ed schools. Sex (hetero and otherwise) is a lot tougher to avoid, but in general there’s a culture of livability in the dorms at women’s colleges.</p>
<p>If what you’re concerned about is sex etc. occurring in your daughter’s actual room, that’s more a matter of roommate dynamics than campus culture, I think. If your daughter is very clear on day 1 about what she will and won’t accept in her space, she’s a lot less likely to have sexile problems even on a party campus. She’ll have to be clear, though, that she’s defending her space rather than trying to control someone else’s behavior. There’s no secular college where you can prevent your classmates from having sex. It’s just a question of where.</p>
<p>Having visited Mills College this summer, I was surprised at how open and frequent the overnight stays by the opposite sex were permitted, according to the tour guide.</p>
<p>Even if there aren’t boys on campus, they are still around.</p>
<p>If all womens schools are acceptable to both of you, I’d guess you might be able to avoid some of the environments you find objectionable. I happen to believe that a lot of the drinking that goes on at co-ed universities has to do with the social issues of feeling comfortable around the opposite sex. Lots of choices for high-quality womens colleges.</p>
<p>I disagree Hanna on the point that women’s college students do their drinking off campus. I went to a women’s college, and students for sure drank, used drugs, and had sex (sometimes with each other, sometimes not) on campus. In fact, the majority of them at least at my college did those things on campus as opposed to off. </p>
<p>BUT I think it’s accurate to say that women’s colleges are by-and-large not “party schools”. I don’t think women’s college students drink, use drugs, or necessarily have sex any less than students at LACs of similar size and location, but they certainly don’t do it any more than similarly sized/located schools. Also, most of the remaining women’s colleges are pretty prestigious and quite rigorous, so students who devote the bulk of their time to being high or intoxicated are not going to thrive. </p>
<p>Don’t assume that a women’s college will be a way to keep your daughter away from these influences just because she’d be surrounded by other women. These are colleges, not convents and they no longer operate by 1950s era rules (no men above the first floor, no overnight guests, curfews, house mothers, etc). But like many small LACs, women’s colleges are atmospheres where studying takes priority over partying, there are a variety of social activities outside of drinking, and (at least in my experience) you can participate in the normal social whirl while choosing to stay sober, even if your friends choose to drink.</p>
<p>I said that they will OFTEN drink off-campus, not always. I’m a women’s college alum, too. Did you really find that the on-campus drinking scene at Smith was comparable to that at Amherst? That is definitely not true of Bryn Mawr vs. Haverford and Swarthmore.</p>
<p>I think Bryn Mawr is an excellent suggestion, but calling it conservative is a bit of a stretch. Each dorm, for instance, votes on if the bathrooms will be co-ed or not. </p>
<p>hypermom, you might also look at co-ed schools that have women’s only dorms.</p>
<p>Hmmm… I went to a women’s college with a loose (very loose) affiliation with a religion. I remember driving with my roommate to get liquor, illegal where we were at our age at the time, but obtainable elsewhere. (I was not a drinker; I was just along for the ride.) I remember dormmates smoking pot in their rooms. I remember having to go fetch a couple of students from the hospital – I had a car – after they had been in a car accident… the driver, one of the students I was fetching, had been smoking dope while she drove. (The car was totaled. I went to see the car a couple of days later, and was surprised after seeing the car that they had survived.) I remember hearing the springs on the bed in the room above me an awful lot, and it was perfectly clear why. I remember girls looking forward to frat parties at a neighboring college for the booze and the sex.</p>
<p>That was in my first semester. I left in the middle of my second semester. That was not quite the atmosphere I had expected.</p>
<p>Hanna - Okay, fair enough, there is more drinking at Amherst, though Amherst culture is also very sports-oriented and I think quite a bit of that drinking is centered on sporting events. And drug use is much higher at Hampshire than at the other LACs in the consortium. </p>
<p>I guess my point was more that while there’s a stronger drinking culture at Amherst, in my experience Smith women do most of their drinking on campus, they don’t go to co-ed schools for much of their drinking experiences. </p>
<p>Sometimes students go to bars downtown as well, but only if they’re of age, Northampton is very strict when it comes to IDs. If you have an out of state ID, every single bar and liquor store in town will demand an accompanying credit card to prove that it’s not a fake. So that means that drinking is pretty restricted to on campus activities. Of which there is plenty, though admittedly less than at Amherst or UMASS. Having a big school focus on sports changes the dynamic quite a bit.</p>